


the wallpaper's peeling

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Light Farm Work, M/M, References to Kavinsky, References to Sex, Ronan Moping, Spooning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:19:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7839211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Parrish got up at half past four in the morning to work in a trailer factory and the world is ticking pathetically on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the wallpaper's peeling

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be for Pynch Week but it turns out I'm nowhere near fast enough to manage a fic a day after work, so here it is all polished up and on its own and I'm going to call my Pynch Week Attempt done now. 
> 
> Thanks to my beautiful wife [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta'ing and also for making me a brownie 11/10

The first morning after Adam slept with him should have felt different. Ronan woke, late and alone, and waited to feel a change, some transcendence, the sort of floating, glowy aftermath that Gansey had described to him in his most conspiratorial voice. Gansey had looked pleased just talking about it, pink-cheeked with some memory of being sandwiched between Cheng and Sargent.

Ronan mostly just feels cold. Ever since he gave Cabeswater away, he has woken feeling cluttered, his head jammed full of hard-edged memories and problems he’s not sure he wants to work on. His imagined woods gave him horrors, then peace, and now nothing which is worst of all. There’s no clarity left for him behind his closed eyes, and the waking world takes him back unkindly.

Adam had said the night before that he’d be getting up for work, then school, and Ronan had laughed because it was still ridiculous, how he could go back to the mundane without even questioning it. “Adam Parrish, you’ve just defeated a demon and saved your best friend’s life,” he’d said the night before. “What do you want to do now? Oh, fucking first period World Hist. There’s a test Wednesday. It’s _important_.” 

Adam hadn’t laughed, but Adam had forgiven him. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever slept over, but every time in the past had been under the duvet, over the sheet, the pull of his weight on the taut fabric a constant, agonizing reminder to Ronan of his obscene closeness. Last night he was as close as he could have been, tangled legs and hot breath, covers thrown back and prayers locked blasphemously behind Ronan’s teeth. It was near silent and painfully intimate and whatever Adam had wanted it to be, and Ronan had felt something like whole.

Now he stares at crumpled sheets waiting for inspiration, because Adam Parrish got up at half past four in the morning to work in a trailer factory and the world is ticking pathetically on.

He has a shower. The bathroom is a mess of tiny miracles and the water smells like rain on a mountain, and he’s not in the mood for it. Downstairs, there is one plate tucked neatly on the drying rack, and the uncharitable part of Ronan wonders if Adam’s going to try and pay him back for two slices of bread. Probably not. Adam never bothered Ronan with the checks and balances he’d go to war with Gansey for, though Ronan’s sure he still keeps count. Adam Parrish, impractically practical.

Ronan puts the plate away, not liking how awkwardly alone it is. He misses the sight of a dozen mismatched pieces of chipped crockery, and he is beyond glad to not have to see his mother’s mug set on the bench, and the Barns is still able to turn him inside out, just a little, every day. Today the thing to avoid is apparently plates, so Ronan makes a sandwich and just keeps it in his hands, staring out at the fields. Frost is beginning to creep in at the corner of the window panes, and soon it will start icing the grass. Ronan thinks, stupidly, that he hasn’t had a winter at the Barns alone. Maybe Declan will bring Matthew back for Christmas; maybe Declan won’t let Matthew near a whisper of magic ever again.

At least there’s work to be done on the farm, work made for Ronan’s heart, that can swallow him up like the outer world could never do. Even if the Barns aren’t truly real, and nothing would actually go wrong if he never lifted a finger, it feels good to go through the motions of it. He feeds the animals that only maybe need to eat, waters the world’s hardiest crops, disappears into motion and nature and the world he part-inherited, part-created, part-chose.

Some routine is ingrained; it’s impossible not to notice when it turns three in the afternoon, and impossible not to think about Adam and Gansey at school, Gansey striding out the gates, Ronan’s twice-resurrected king, and Adam following with all his quiet power. Though he supposes Cheng’s with them too now, but it’s hard to work up any proper jealousy over that. It’s still _Aglionby_. They are still wearing ties. He thinks about Cheng and Gansey going to Nino’s, and he thinks about Adam going back to work, and there is something in his chest wound too tight that he wishes he could ease.

It wasn’t like this with Kavinsky, it wasn’t an ache, it was just an itch in need of some furious nails. This is worse because last night was hot breath and starlight and biting a blessing into Adam’s collarbone, and today there is reality, Adam returned to the real world and Ronan left to wonder if he’s coming back. Like Adam isn’t so eager to get the dirt out from under his nails. Asking outright would be swallowing poison, so Ronan picks berries until the sun sets and carries them in with the dusk. Maybe he’ll make a pie, like his mother used to. Maybe he’ll burn it like she never could.

Adam has never actually told Ronan his schedule, but Ronan has absorbed it like so many other things, and Ronan stays up too late, waiting for Adam’s too late shift to end. Part of him wants to call Gansey and most of him would still prefer not to touch a phone, especially not with a future of _Skype calls_ and _long distance_ looming. He’s not looking forward to it.

Adam arrives like a visitor, knocking on the front door and waiting to be let in, like it wouldn’t be his home if he wanted. It doesn’t matter; he says, “Hey,” to Ronan and shuffles in, the weight of his day heavy on his shoulders like  he did more with it than cavort with fictional animals and stare at the clouds and pine. If Ronan was more capable of self-awareness, this might be the time for it.

Instead he says, “Long day, Parrish?” in the half-mocking tone he saves for strangers, because he can’t stop the words from coming out that way, and because he can’t stand how stiffly Adam is holding himself in one corner of the kitchen.

At least Adam knows him well enough to drawl, “Yeah, Lynch, some of us still work for a living,” with whatever dregs of humour are left in him.

It wouldn’t be hard to push him too far, so Ronan shuts up and watches Adam drag his hands over his face, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his eyes while gravity wreathes itself around him. There’s a fleck of oil on his wrist and it’s flavouring more space than it should be able to reach, a hint of hot summer road drifting to Ronan’s nose. There’s too much crushed together in his chest, and he wants to get it out but his tongue can only transmute it to aggression. He flicks the kettle on instead.

His father once made a jug that wouldn’t boil when watched, but it was stowed in the attic long ago, and Ronan is free to glare at this one like his gaze can help heat the water. He drags a mug off the shelf, trying not to notice who it belongs to, trying not to acknowledge that they’re not coming back for it, and makes Adam a terrible, too-weak cup of tea. He leaves after that, not wanting to watch Adam hunched at his family table with his fingers locked around the mug. All day waiting for him to come home, and Ronan chafed at three minutes of his company; he goes outside to gulp down some night air.  

It’s getting cold enough that Ronan can see his breath shimmer in the porch lights. Soon winter will crack Adam’s hands open, knuckles bloodied without a fight, and Ronan thinks about that, and gasoline, and black blood pooling slowly from his nose. Somewhere in the night, he can hear Opal skittering about, a rough clash of impossible hooves from an impossible girl, and for a moment it’s all he can do not to hate Adam for wanting more.

Adam’s shadow falls onto the porch, but Adam doesn’t follow it out, just stops in the doorway. “I’m tired,” he says, perfunctory, “I’m going to bed,” and Ronan had known it wouldn’t be like last night, and it wouldn’t be like the first time Adam had followed him out and burned him down to the bone, but it’s still a disappointment. He gives a fraction of a nod, the rest pressed down under his tongue, and Adam hesitates, scanning his face for resentment, for a sign he’d made a mistake in coming back, for a reason not to return. Ronan aches to give him one.

“Look,” Adam tries after an overburdened heartbeat, “I don’t have to sleep in your room.”

“No,” Ronan says, too fast, “It’s fine. Let’s go.”

Adam doesn’t seem to trust that it’s fine, but he still follows, through the kitchen with its lone cup on the drying rack, up the stairs to the slope-roofed little room that forms the centre of Ronan’s universe. When Adam turns his back to undress, Ronan rakes his eyes over the curve of his shoulders, the constellation of freckles spattered down the back of his neck, but looks away as Adam slides his jeans off.

They meet again between the same sheets, though Adam’s exhaustion is about as present as he is. There’s a tension in the air, a question, the awkward gaps left between two people learning how to co-exist, but it’s simpler to look at with nothing left between them. Ronan’s arm wraps around Adam’s side, and Adam fits neatly against Ronan’s chest, and there’s no fire but there are embers, a drowsy warmth.

“You’ll be going home tomorrow,” Ronan says into the silence, not a question but an educated guess about how Adam Parrish doles out intimacy and guards his own independence.

“My plants actually need water to live,” Adam murmurs somewhere into his elbow. He shifts a second later, a half-turn that rolls him tighter against Ronan, and he adds, “I will come back.”

Outside, the stars shiver against a chill wind, and Opal learns the crunch frost makes beneath her. Inside, Ronan tucks Adam tighter against him, nose pressed into the hair on the back of his neck, burying himself in sweat and soap and the dust of summer that Adam still hasn’t quite shed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I'd love to know what you thought, here or on [tumblr!](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/)


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